That's a good sign for the future, because it shows that we still recruit really well (or have in recent history). Unfortunately, that is bad if you consider our subsequent win percentage in the last 4 years.

Lloyd Carr went 7-5, 11-2, and 9-4 his last three years. Those are OK records, but not for teams averaging top ten recruiting classes. If Michigan hadn't underachieved during Carr's last three years, he would have been able to leave on his own terms. Even a potential season for the ages in 2006 came to a dream-crushing end.

So, really, it's more like " the last six years," and probably a lot longer than that. Michigan has to prove that it is able to take advantage of all of those top ten classes and turn them into teams that can win BCS bowls, and compete for the NC every few years.

I have followed "the leaders and best" for 50 years and been "rewarded" with one split national championship and every season-crushing disappointment one can imagine on a semi-regular basis. I'm guessing that I have somewhere around 20-25 years to enjoy football until I either die or my brain starts to turn to goo. I don't think one or two more national championships to cheer for is too much to ask.

When you see we were ranked 9th in recruiting, yet only 24th in winning %, you might conclude we were achieving less with more. Of course on an overall basis, you have to take into account the strength of the conference, non-conference opponents, coaching turnover (which definitely hurt us) and other factors.

"You owe it to every man, woman, and child in the State of Michigan to beat the Buckeyes and silence their fans! Now go out there and make it happen!"

Utah and Hawaii and TCU and Nevada and WVU all these other big fish in little ponds would just play each other instead of clogging up half of the top 25 with their inflated stats. I'm a huge fan of the underdog teams, but when they're are 6 of them and they never play anyone and they're all in or near the top 10 I start hoping they actually play a good football team for a change.

I agree with you completely, but it does take a while to do that. Utah is now joining the Pac 10, TCU and WVU will now be in the same league, and there was some switch in the MWC/WAC that made it harder, I can't remember how it went though. Plus, once Boise got good they put Oregon and VT on their schedule, and beat them both. I agree with your point, but we have to give a little credit.

a month or 2 after the regular season ends is not a good measure of how teams would perform on a regular basis. TCU does have good defense, but if they played all of the B1G day in and day out every year they wouldn't perform the same as they did one time in Pasadena. College Bowl Games are typically flukes, while season stats are a completely different animal, using one as a reference for the other is a bad idea. To my point, and as much as I hate to say it, App State beat Michigan once, but it doesn't mean they're as good as a B1G school.

I wouldn't call TCU beating Wisconsin a fluke considering TCU won all 12 games before that. I know those were against lesser competition but they destroyed most of those teams, including teams like Utah who had good seasons.

I don't think people are saying that game was a fluke, but the winning percentage was the impetus for the conversation, and if TCU played the same schedule Wisconsin played, they probably wouldn't have gone 12-0. Maybe they would have, maybe they would have gone 11-1 or 10-2.

Don't tell me those years that USC lost 1 or 2 games that they wouldn't have gone undefeated in the MWC or WAC. That's why the Boise States and TCUs have inflated win%. Not that those teams aren't good or that they did have very good seasons in that stretch, but if they played a BCS conference schedule, those 11 win seasons would have been 8 or 9 most years and 11 every now and then. Which would bring their win % down a lot.

UM's winning percentage is sharply distorted by the RR years. Not trying to start a RR debate, but that is the primary reason he was terminated. If those three years are removed (i.e., just the previous seven are compared for everyone), I am sure our winning percentage is much more closely aligned with our recruiting ranking. Of course, teams with substantially easier schedules year-in and year-out (i.e., Boise State, Utah) have a built-in advantage when it comes to winning percentage, so we still probably would be a few places lower in winning percentage than we are in recruiting ranking.

Love Hokemon's recruiting class this year, and was never a fan of nor confident in any of RR's classes (especially defensively) the way I am about this 2012 class. That being said I also feel that weve had national championship talent during the early-mid part of last decade and greatly underachieved

Not that I'm trying to start an RR debate, but his 2010 class was very good defensively.

The DL had Jibreel Black, Kenny Wilkins, Richard Ash, Jordan Paskorz and Terry Talbott. Jibreel Black was good for a frosh, the other guys redshirted, which is normal.

The only LB was Jake Ryan, but early reports on him are good. Technically he signed Kinard and Rogers, but they didn't make the grade.

DBs were solid as well - Furman, MRob and Carvin at safeties, which is looking like a very solid group, and Cullen Christian, Courtney Avery and Terrence Talbott at CB. CC grossly under achieved, but it's hard to blame RR for that since everybody wanted him. Avery looks like an over achiever and the jury's out on little Talbott.

Vinopal and Dorsey are the other guys in this class who aren't on the team, but especially with Vinopal it's hard to fault RR since he seemed like a major diamond in the rough.

A lot of these guys aren't on the team, some you can blame RR for (Dorsey, Kinard, maybe Rogers) and others you really can't (CC, Vinopal). Still, it looks like this class has at least a few sure-fire guys (Black, Avery, Ryan, Johnson, Furman, Robinson) and a handful more who will be depth guys or upperclassman starters/contributors. That's not amazing, but that's by no means a bad defensive class. Of the guys still on the team, that's 3 4 stars on D alone according to Rivals, and that doesn't count Avery, Furman, Johnson, Black who are playing like 4 stars or close to it.

Our OLine the next few years is going to be a group of athletic steamrollers. I really think we have the building blocks to have a better Stanford-like 2010 team with a mobile accuracy-laden talent like Morris set to arrive. I say better because M will have the punishing OLine and Andrew Luck type QB but with better TEs and WRs. To top it off, a defensive guru with ++ recruiting prowess on the other side of the ball....great to be a Michigan Wolverine fan

I agree with better TEs and defensive improvements but better WRs? As of right now our WR situation for the future is not too promising, though I agree that could definitely change with the addition of someone like Stanford or Burbridge this year and the likely highly ranked WRs who join Morris in 2013.

for UM to get to that level. I watched a few Stanford games living 30 mins from the campus, and their TEs were very productive players, I checked the stats and their two combined for 700 yds and 12 TDs, now I think Koger has the talent, maybe even Webb, but it will take a year or two for them and any new recruits to reach those numbers, esp now moving from the spread to an offense that features the TE a bit more.

(2) Sure, maybe. Maxpreps has UM #1 at the moment, and UM is still in on some big fish. But I think it's more likely UM ends firmly in top 10, not #1, after re-ranks boost every SEC commit, and [fill in blank SEC school] loads up their class with 35 commits.

Not necessarily true: larger classes tend to get favored in recruiting rankings. It isn't terriblely unjust because if you have similar averages to another team, but have more kids, it just gives you more depth and opportunities to land a playmaker or even a contributor. It is why oversigning is such a competitive advantage.

But with USC's limits, their quantity will be much lower than any top-10 team, and their quality won't be that much better. Unless USC pulls in a few 5-stars, they'll probably be out of the top 10. They only have 6 more spots they can fill, maybe fewer depending on their total schollie situation.

Good chance an SEC team oversigns and lands a bunch more prospects than Texas. According to Rivals, Texas is getting more talent than we are, but they usually fill up on top talent in Texas then try and hand pick players. It gets them lots of top-5s and top-3s, but unless they can land some more big fish (5 stars like Peat or Theus etc.) the SEC has the advantage with their ability to sign so many players.

2. No conference-level signing cap (though they've just instituted a new policy). The Big Ten has a hard cap on the number of kids a university can sign per year, and, I believe, in any four-year period. The SEC has had no such provisions, leading to Houston Nutt signing 37 players to LOI's in one class at Ole Miss a couple years ago. Saban is the patron 'saint' of oversigning. And by 'saint' I mean 'sinner.' But the hue and cry from the blogosphere, as well as the higher-ups at UGA and Florida, have led to the SEC attempting to reign in the practice (though their new rule lacks the teeth of the Big Ten's, for example). Which is a good thing for the kids unfairly booted from college for not being "as good at football as some other kid," and, therefore, losing their chance to get a 4-year degree on scholarship from a D-1 school. Which they likely assumed they'd be entitled to, assuming they kept their nose clean and handled their studies.